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German Ghost Border

I’ve just seen another map shared by the Twitter account, @onlmaps, which I felt compelled to discuss on here. You can see it at this link.

As anyone who is familiar with maps of Europe between 1945 and 1989 can testify, this divide is almost exactly along the border between the former Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the communist, Soviet-puppet German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Less than 30% of the population of former East Germany is religious, compared to an average of 60%-90% in former West Germany. The reason for this seems fairly clear: after 12 years of Nazi rule, West Germany allowed its citizens to continue worshiping freely, whereas East Germany’s government advocated an atheist, secular agenda. According to Wikipedia, one way it did this was by organising secular coming-of-age ceremonies to replace the Catholic equivalent, and largely discouraging church attendance in general. As with the Polish Ghost Border, I find it incredible how long-gone borders between countries can continue to have a social and economic impact upon the territory they divided.

The main reason this divide surprised me is that I had always assumed that the Soviet-Communist governments had largely failed in bringing religious observance down. But I’ve done some research into the former Eastern-bloc countries and the results seem to be mixed:

So actually, incredibly mixed. Some area were successful, such as Estonia, Ukraine and Belarus. These three countries were formerly part of the Soviet Union, yet Lithuania, also in the Soviet Union, still sees high religious observance. Meanwhile, Poland and Romania have incredibly low rates of non-religion; I can only presume that their Cold War governments did not push an agenda of atheism.

So actually, the cases of East Germany, Estonia and Ukraine aside, the Soviet-Communist governments of the Eastern Bloc don’t seem to have had that significant impact in reducing religious observance compared to the natural decline we’ve witnessed in the West. Perhaps my original assumption was correct, and that East Germany’s government was the exception.

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*This is from the 2001 census, as the results of the 2011 census for Scotland don’t seem to have been published yet. I imagine it will be at least 30% now, considering that England and Wales lept from 15% to 25% between 2001 and 2011. If Scotland had a similar jump, we might even see 38% of Scots claiming no religion. It’s curious that Scotland is less religious than the rest of the UK.

3 thoughts on “German Ghost Border”

I forgot to say that in Scotland, religion has an unfortunate tendency to get mixed up with football. This maybe explains the religious aspect you describe. During the worst of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, the famous Celtic manager Jock Stein described Rangers versus Celtic as “Scotland’s safety valve”

I travelled extensively through what was West Germany in the 1980s. But I don’t remember them being particularly religious at all. Except at Cologne Cathedral, which amazingly survived the war. And thank goodness, it’s an incredible place.